Helga Tawil Souri reclines on the couch at a friend's house in the Palestinian West Bank, getting sucked into an Egyptian movie about a woman in an insane asylum. Right before the climactic face-off, though, the screen goes black, and a different movie pops on. A visitor to the area, Souri is startled and a bit peeved. Her host, a dentist named Abu Mohammed, grins knowingly. He picks up his cell phone and dials the manager of the local television station. After gossiping and speculating about the weather for a few minutes, Mohammed gets to the point: "Look, if it's not too much trouble, can you put the movie back on?" Five minutes later, televisions across the area flicker, the image on the screen shifts, and the original film's conclusion airs.
Welcome to the barely controlled chaos of Palestinian television. The system was established in 1993, as part of the Oslo Peace Accords, when Israel agreed to let the Palestinians have control of broadcast frequencies that could be used for TV stations. But the two sides didn't sign a permanent bandwidth agreement, leaving the Palestinian Authority without the power to strictly regulate the airwaves. The result is that almost anyone who wants to start a station can.
Naturally, this environment appeals more to guys with cheap transmitters and stocks of bootleg DVDs than to deep-pocketed moguls. At least 45 stations have sprouted up in the West Bank in the past 13 years, most run by local media mavens who got their start filming weddings and birthdays. They sell ad time to local businesses, and their sets remind you of a poorly funded high school AV club - hand-painted backdrops and chipped plaster walls. Only a few of the stations have digital editing ability, and the payroll and profits for many hover around $5 a day.
The content is a mishmash of strident homegrown political commentary and lowbrow pan-Arab entertainment. A few broadcasters with expensive satellite dishes are able to rebroadcast international fare - like Al-Jazeera or British soccer matches - and, in a few instances, the latest pirated Hollywood films. But about one-third of what's aired is produced locally. During the recent Palestinian legislative campaigns, political roundtables and even some original reporting ran nonstop through Election Day. During the second intifada, TV outlets controlled by the Palestinian Authority were among the Israeli army's first targets, and independent stations provided what locals considered to be a crucial communications backup.
Not surprisingly, there are plenty of people who think the chaos is blocking the development of bigger and better service. "These small stations are the reason TV here is in such bad shape," says veteran Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab. He founded a nonprofit group that aspires to broadcast private network programming via satellite. Ultimately, he says, it could knock out what he views as parasitic mom-and-pop stations.
Fellow journalist Walid Batrawi shares Kuttab's goals and has helped draft reforms for the Palestinian Authority calling for minimum levels of investment, education, and staffing for each station. The restrictions were supposed to go into effect in 2000 and would have put many small operations out of business. But the second intifada made implementation impossible; the constant turmoil in the region since then, and the ever-present fear that Israel could attack government-owned Palestinian TV stations, has only complicated matters.
"I can understand why the Palestinian government allows them to stay open," admits Batrawi, sipping tea in a Ramallah café. "But I can't see them closed soon enough."
- Rebecca Sinderbrand
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Live From the West Bank
